In 2003, an off-hand remark by then incoming senate majority leader Trent Lott got little notice from the mainstream press. However, weblogs got into the action, picking up on the remarks and doing further research to put the story in context. The mainstream press picked up the brouhaha that ensued, eventually leading to Mr. Lott’s resignation from office. How does this relate to the modular by design approach? Let’s delve in. While the Internet did facilitate such discussions, what happened here was the result of a number of individuals discussing and sharing information, individual units building on top of the work of other individual units to have an impact on the way news is reported. Had the story developed in the mainstream newspapers, it would have taken much longer to take hold. For example, Woodward and Bernstein and the rest of the Washington Post team worked diligently on the Watergate story for 26 months and because the mainstream press generally looks for validation from their competitors in the guise of follow-on stories (what one could call either pack mentality or group think), they often had to check and recheck that they were heading in the right direction. Granted, the secrets…